I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

When I was 5, some financial things happened, and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment, sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say, ‚Don’t get comfortable, because we may not be here long.‘

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

You have to put in many, many, many tiny efforts that nobody sees or appreciates before you achieve anything worthwhile.

I was brought up as an only child, and we were very close. But when I was 14, we got evicted. We came home to a padlock, and I looked up at my mom and she was crying, and there was nothing to do.

If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.

I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction.

A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it’s usually lousy.

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed – there’s so little competition.

The presence of passion within you is the greatest gift you can receive. Treat it as a miracle.

Don’t compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.

Even the best teams can fail. Celebrities can fade. There is only One in whom your faith is always safe, and that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you need to let your faith show!

Ego is only fine when it is working for your motivation.

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.

I felt unhappy and trapped. If I left baseball, where could I go, what could I do to earn enough money to help my mother and to marry Rachel? The solution to my problem was only days away in the hands of a tough, shrewd, courageous man called Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

I think it does Discworld good if I don’t write about it all the time: sometimes you have to get it out of your system.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

If you’re nice to me I’ll never write anything bad about you.

If a small-town boy like me who bagged groceries was able to make his dreams come true, you can too.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

I do believe in the old saying, ‚What does not kill you makes you stronger.‘ Our experiences, good and bad, make us who we are. By overcoming difficulties, we gain strength and maturity.

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.

What one has to do usually can be done.

Virtually nothing is impossible in this world if you just put your mind to it and maintain a positive attitude.

You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

NASA has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve. It’s sad that we are turning the programme in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people.

No sanction can stand against ignited minds.

I think music is something that can, and should, be used to get you into different things because eventually what goes up must come down – we’re not going to be the number one group in the world forever – so you have to have something else to fall back on.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

I promise you, I will have something on the Internet that is game-changing. I can’t lose.

I never woke up and thought, ‚I really want to live a bold life.‘

Let the people on both sides keep their self-possession, and just as other clouds have cleared away in due time, so will this, and this great nation shall continue to prosper as before.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

I wasn’t that great a chef, and I don’t think I’m that great a writer.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

Whatever you want to do, do with full passion and work really hard towards it. Don’t look anywhere else. There will be a few distractions, but if you can be true to yourself, you will be successful for sure.

I believe that one person can make a difference.

A leader is a dealer in hope.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

My favorite affirmation when I feel stuck or out of sorts is: Whatever I need is already here, and it is all for my highest good. Jot this down and post it conspicuously throughout your home, on the dashboard of your car, at your office, on your microwave oven, and even in front of your toilets!

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.